The English Presentation Contest by iEARN TAIWAN

Saturday, May 25, 2019

Sharing our VR English campus guide project and various international video conferencing sessions with Japanese and Korean schools in an English presentation contest and winning the Excellence Award

We started making preparations for the contest this Monday because of the senior high school entrance exam. I decided on the main content and structure, and then the two gifted students worked on the PPT slides. I asked a favor of two English-speaking friends to have a listen and give us suggestions via Skype.

Our presentation is mainly about how we created the VR English campus guide by taking panoramic pictures with the APP, Google Street View, and recording the voice-over with a laptop. If you put on the VR glasses, it'll give you an immersive experience because you can look around the school and hear an English introduction without actually being there. Following that, I conducted numerous Skype exchange sessions with Japanese and Korean high schools, talking about school life and the beauty of each other's school and the city, too.

The competition is held annually by iEARN TAIWAN, a renowned organization specializing in promoting Project-Based Learning and international education. A total of seven teams participated in this event in Taichung, with topics featuring international collaborations and the use of the English language.

Contestants are required to present only in English within a time limit of six minutes, along with a two-minute Q & A session. The content of the presentation, according to iEARN TAIWAN, is advised to follow a framework that elaborates on the motivation, process, problems and solutions, implications, and future goals. 

The judges provided some useful suggestions on the use of English, the mutual learning experience from Taiwanese students' counterparts, and most important of all, how to incorporate these projects into regular classes and benefit more students. Well, I totally agreed for the most part. In my case, however, those who get to make important decisions did not share the same value of these projects, not to mention they tend to get in the way.